Bright and early this morning (Sydney time) Ceremony announced a round of Australian tour dates for this coming March. Tickets on sale Friday. The GREAT poster shown above was designed by Matthew Bellosi. Full details below:

“After a two year break between European tours, Ceremony crossed the pond this summer for a sprint across the continent.

In a roundabout way Ceremony helped me get a full time job doing something that I love, so naturally when they came over I had to figure out a way to ditch work, shirk all responsibility and get in the van with them.

Maybe I could be the runner? The merch guy? Drunkenly help manage the tour? De facto tour clown?

Earlier this morning Ceremony shared demos from their fifth studio album The L-Shaped Man which was released officially last month. “We never recorded demos for an album before and we wanted to showcase the journey we went on to create this album,” says Ceremony’s Anthony Anzaldo. The band are at the front end of a long line of touring this summer across North America and (announced today) Mexico.

Stream The L-Shaped Man: Demo Recordings on Spotify in the link below:

Just a reminder that Ceremony’s massive U.S. and Canadian tour in support of the just released ‘The L-Shaped Man’ starts tomorrow evening in lovely San Diego tonight in beautiful Visalia, CA. Ticket links and all-star supports are listed below :

via the Matador Store you can order a special bundle that includes the CD or colored vinyl LP of ‘The L-Shaped Man’, along with a Ceremony T-shirt and/or a 36-page limited edition book of poems Ross Farrar.

A new album and a new sound brings a new remix by David West (Total Control/Rat Columns/Rank Xerox) of Ceremony’s ‘Your Life in France’, from the freshly released ‘The L-Shaped Man’. Have a listen to Liberation’s remix below.

Good news! Ceremony are returning to the UK and Europe this August for the first time since 2012, for a string of headline and festival dates to showcase their new album The L-Shaped Man which was released worldwide as of last week.

After subjecting you to a wait that can only be described as cruel, the countdown to the release of Ceremony’s new album, ‘The L-Shaped Man’, is finally over. To mark this joyous occasion, you can catch Ceremony tonight at San Francisco’s Vacation (651 Larkin Street) at 8pm. All ages are admitted and it’s free (because what kind of monsters charge you money for an instore?)

Also via the Matador Store you can order a special bundle that includes the CD or colored vinyl LP along with a Ceremony T-shirt and/or a 36-page limited edition book of poems by Ross Farrar which parallels lyrics from ‘The L-Shaped Man’.

In addition to new dates being announced in Montreal, Toronto and Hamden, CT (see below), the new Ceremony album ‘The L-Shaped Man’ is streaming in full today courtesy of KEXP, one week prior to release.

Pre-order ‘The L-Shaped Man’ on iTunes ($7.99) and and get instant downloads of “My Life In France”, “The Separation” and “The Understanding”. Plus iTunes exclusive bonus track “Vivication” and iTunes exclusive pre-order only bonus track, “The Hide”. Both bonus tracks will be delivered with the album on May 19 release date.

You can also preorder on Amazon MP3 and receive instant downloads of “The Separation” and “The Understanding” (click on the Amazon MP3 store option in order to receive instant downloads).

Also via the Matador Store you can pre-order a special bundle that includes the CD or colored vinyl LP along with a Ceremony T-shirt and/or a 36-page limited edition book of poems by Ceremony vocalist Ross Farrar which parallels lyrics from ‘The L-Shaped Man’.

Pre-order ‘The L-Shaped Man’ on iTunes ($7.99) and and get instant downloads of “My Life In France”, “The Separation” and “The Understanding”. Plus iTunes exclusive bonus track “Vivication” and iTunes exclusive pre-order only bonus track, “The Hide”. Both bonus tracks will be delivered with the album on May 19 release date.

You can also preorder on Amazon MP3 and receive instant downloads of “The Separation” and “The Understanding” (click on the Amazon MP3 store option in order to receive instant downloads).

Also via the Matador Store you can pre-order a special bundle that includes the CD or colored vinyl LP along with a Ceremony T-shirt and/or a 36-page limited edition book of poems by Ceremony vocalist, Ross Farrar, which parallels lyrics from ‘The L-Shaped Man’.

Pre-order ‘The L-Shaped Man’ on iTunes ($7.99) and and get instant downloads of “The Separation” and “The Understanding”. Plus iTunes exclusive bonus track “Vivication” and iTunes exclusive pre-order only bonus track, “The Hide”. Both bonus tracks will be delivered with the album on May 19 release date.

You can also preorder on Amazon MP3 and receive instant downloads of “The Separation” and “The Understanding” (click on the Amazon MP3 store option in order to receive instant downloads).

Also via the Matador Store you can pre-order a special bundle that includes the CD or colored vinyl LP along with a Ceremony T-shirt and/or a 36-page limited edition book of poems by Ceremony vocalist, Ross Farrar, which parallels lyrics from ‘The L-Shaped Man’.

Breakup albums mark a turning point for a band: the moment when their sound completely changes and reaches a new level of emotional clarity. All that heartbreak and malaise condensed into any single record often makes for a defining piece of work, no matter the genre. The best records explore the nooks and crannies of sadness, learning it inside and out – celebrating it.

(photo by Shawn Brackbill)

Ceremony’s fifth studio album, ‘The L-Shaped Man’, uses singer Ross Farrar’s recent breakup as a platform to explore loneliness and emotional weariness, but it is by no means a purely sad album. Rather than look inward, Farrar uses his experience to write about what it means to go through something heavy and come out the other side a different person.

In telling Farrar’s story, Ceremony have almost completely stripped back the propulsive hardcore of their previous records, turning every angry outburst into simmering despair. “We’ve always tried to be minimalists in writing, even if it’s loud or fast or abrasive,” says lead guitarist Anthony Anzaldo. “It’s really intense when I hear it. Not in a way where you turn everything up to ten. Things are so bare, you’re holding this one note for so long and you don’t now where it’s going-to me, that’s intensity.” That intensity is apparent on “Exit Fears,” the first full song on the record. It meticulously pairs Justin Davis’ loping bassline, which pulls the track along, with Anzaldo’s icy, minimal guitar work. It brings to mind some alternate version of Joy Division that hasn’t quite lost all hope. It gets close to exploding, but instead plays the shadows, never quite rising above a nervous simmer.

“A lot of the content has to do with loss, and specifically the loss of someone who you care deeply about,” Farrar says. “There is no way for you to go through something like this artistically and not have really strong emotions of loss and pain. There’s not really any way to hide that.” Farrar, for his part, is singing with a new kind of intensity, his baritone swooping and retreating from stressed angst to unsettling near-mutter as he sings, “You told your friends you were fine/ you thought you were fine too…” and later, “nothing is ever fine/ nothing ever feels right/ you have to tell yourself you tried.” It’s the first of many lyrically direct moments, and it should be hard to listen to, but Ceremony have so effortlessly nailed the sound of sadness that it feels great to live inside for awhile.

The sound is abetted by producer John Reis, who honed his sound in seminal bands like Rocket from the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, and Hot Snakes. Much of the gravelly aggression he experimented with in those bands is present on ‘The L-Shaped Man’.

There’s a story behind the title too. “I was speaking to our driver Stephen while on tour,” Farrar says. “We were talking about men in general and what shape they are…their body type. I said, ‘I guess men are in the shape of an L. The torso is straight. Vertical. And then you have the little feet at the end.’ There’s this painter named Leslie Lerner who was living in San Francisco in the ’70s and ’80s and made these beautiful paintings. He died on my 21st birthday. A lot of the record is about the similarities in our ideas. In what we’re trying to make. Things that have to do with love and losing love.”

Pre-order ‘The L-Shaped Man’ on iTunes ($7.99) and and get instant downloads of “The Separation” and “The Understanding”. Plus iTunes exclusive bonus track “Vivication” and iTunes exclusive pre-order only bonus track, “The Hide”. Both bonus tracks will be delivered with the album on May 19 release date.

You can also pre-order on Amazon MP3 and receive instant downloads of “The Separation” and “The Understanding” (click on the Amazon MP3 store option in order to receive instant downloads).

Also on the Matador Store you can pre-order a special bundle that includes the CD or colored vinyl LP along with a Ceremony T-shirt and/or a 36-page limited edition book of poems by Ceremony vocalist, Ross Farrar, which parallels lyrics from The L-Shaped Man.

Alright, the moment is almost upon us. Well, upon me, actually. The moment when my adopted hometown is overrun by the craven, the venal, the self-important and self-entitled hordes demanding free drinks, free drugs and drowning out all nuanced musical performances with their hyena-like cackling. But enough about the Matador staff, there’s loads of other horrible people descending on Austin and they DESERVE to know exactly where and when Ceremony, Iceage, Steve Gunn and The New Pornographers are appearing. And as such, Robby has carefully amended a classic Mark Ohe Matador flyer (above) — he was under strict instructions to “appropriate that shit like Robin Thicke”, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Short of the entire week being cancelled, that is. See you in the pit(s of hell).

Ceremony will be entering the studio shortly to commence work on the long-anticipated followup to 2012’s ‘Zoo’ ; either we’ll be pestering you with more details in the near future or you’ll be reading about it on one of the music news sites we optimistically call “partners” — perhaps both.

Prior to entering the studio to commence work on the long-anticipated followup to ‘Zoo’, Ceremony are hitting the road this summer. Though we’ve got ticket links for several of the shows, there’s a few that’ll be sales on the door only – best to check with the venues directly. You may or may not thrilled to know Ceremony are now on Twitter,, Facebook and Instagram, but we’ll settle for “interested”.

“I will be showing over 150 color photographs on the 22nd at 4pm, at Heritage Public House, in Santa Rosa. The photographs span over a decade and will include various people and places I’ve encountered in that time: 2004-2014. Also, Heritage will be playing The Vibrating Antennas new LP, Th’ Length, throughout the evening. There will be beer discounts and many a strange times to be had.”

While Ceremony are making plans for recording their 5th album in the very near future, a visitor to the label Facebook page alerted us to the existence of the above footage, shot during This Is Hardcore at Philly’s Electric Factory this past August.